(Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Google Inc’s bid to throw out a class action lawsuit involving claims that the company deceived California advertisers about the placement of Internet ads through its Adwords service.

The court’s decision not to hear the case leaves in place a September 2015 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the litigation could move forward as a class action representing advertisers who used the service between 2004 and 2008. Google is part of Alphabet.

The 2008 lawsuit accused Google of violating California fair advertising laws because it misled advertisers about where the ads would be placed. The Adwords service was primarily aimed at placing ads next to relevant Google Internet search results. But the plaintiffs said Google should have disclosed that ads would also appear in undesirable places such as error pages and undeveloped websites known as parked domains.

A federal district court judge in 2012 ruled that the case could not move forward as a class action in part because each advertiser would receive different damages. Each advertiser would have paid a different sum for the ads in question, the judge said. The appeals court reversed the district court, prompting Google to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.

Under a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court precedent involving claims brought by employees against Wal-Mart Stores Inc, class actions can move forward only if each plaintiff has a similar claim and that claim can be resolved on a class-wide basis.

The Supreme Court has shied away from taking new class action cases since the death in February of Justice Antonin Scalia, who had authored the 2011 Wal-Mart ruling. Scalia had been a leader of the court’s moves in recent years to curb class action litigation, although that trend was not borne out in three class action cases decided during its current term.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/06/supreme-court-rejects-google-appeal-in-class-action-adwords-dispute/feed/01970459Supreme Court rejects Google appeal in class action Adwords disputeFacebook must face shareholder class actions over IPOhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/12/30/facebook-must-face-shareholder-class-actions-over-ipo/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/30/facebook-must-face-shareholder-class-actions-over-ipo/#respondWed, 30 Dec 2015 21:36:49 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1857673NEW YORK (By Jonathan Stempel for Reuters) — A federal judge has certified two shareholder class actions accusing Facebook Inc of hiding concerns about its growth forecasts prior to the social media company’s May 2012 initial public offering. U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan said retail and institutional investors who claimed to lose money from […]
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NEW YORK (By Jonathan Stempel for Reuters) — A federal judge has certified two shareholder class actions accusing Facebook Inc of hiding concerns about its growth forecasts prior to the social media company’s May 2012 initial public offering.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan said retail and institutional investors who claimed to lose money from buying Facebook shares at inflated prices in connection with the $16 billion IPO may pursue their respective claims as groups.

The decision is dated Dec. 11 but had been kept under seal, which Sweet lifted in an order made public on Tuesday.

Facebook is appealing the class certifications, which the Menlo Park, California-based company said are “without merit” and conflict with “well-settled” precedent.

Shareholders accused Facebook of concealing internal projections prior to its IPO of how growth in mobile devices, an area in which it generated little ad revenue, might hurt its prospects, even as it quietly warned underwriters to cut their forecasts.

Facebook made its market debut on May 18, 2012 at $38 per share. Its share price fell to $17.55 on Sept. 4, 2012 and stayed below the IPO price for more than a year.

The stock ultimately rebounded, and closed on Tuesday up $1.33 at $107.26 on Nasdaq. That gave Facebook a roughly $303 billion market value, Reuters data show.

In his 55-page decision, Sweet said Facebook “marshaled an impressive amount of evidence” to suggest that shareholders knew how mobile usage would affect revenue.

But he rejected Facebook’s argument that shareholders should pursue their claims individually, which might prove costly and reduce recoveries, because of wide variations in how much they knew.

Sweet wrote that “given the extraordinary size of this case,” allowing two subclasses “in fact adds more weight to the predominance of common questions and answers, practically negating the individualized questions raised.”

In asking the federal appeals court in Manhattan for permission to appeal the class certifications, Facebook said on Monday “the suggestion that class members’ knowledge might be inferred on a class-wide basis flouts due process,” helping make Sweet’s decision “all the more arbitrary.”

The law firms Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Labaton Sucharow were appointed class counsel. Thomas Dubbs, a Labaton partner, said he is pleased with Sweet’s decision.

The case is In re: Facebook Inc IPO Securities and Derivative Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-md-02389.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Chris Reese and Richard Chang)

Filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, the suit alleges that the incomplete information Velti reported led to its stock trading at an artificially inflated price. In other words, the plaintiffs say, Velti defrauded its investors.

Velti has yet to respond to multiple requests for comment on the allegations, but news of its financial struggles shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Over the past few years Velti has had a seriously hard time collecting payments from its ad network partners — many of which were in the cash-strapped countries of Greece and Cyprus.

These collection issues are in large part responsible for the payment problems reported by developers using Moblix, Velti’s mobile ad exchange. According to claims from multiple affected developers, Velti is months behind on payments, which some speculate run as high as $30 million. (Velti has since announced its plans to sell Mobclix, which should help its current money situation if it finds a buyer.)

While Velti has publicly acknowledged these concerns, it turns out that it wasn’t entirely forthcoming with how bad the situation was. Alongside its second-quarter earnings last week, the company announced its decision to write-down over $100 million in accrued receivables — news that sent its stock sliding 66 percent to $0.34 per share.

Because it took Velti so long to report the true magnitude of its problems, plaintiffs say they were given a false and incomplete idea of Velti’s financial health. This cost them money.

Gregory Linkh, an associate at Glancy, Binkow & Goldberg in New York City, said that the damages sought by the case’s plaintiffs “have yet to be ascertained.”

So what’s next for Velti? While some brave stockholders are likely still holding out for the company’s long-promised turnaround, others say that the company’s financial situation can only result in it going bankrupt. We’ll see how it plays out.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about kids it’s that having them is a bad idea. Worse, though, is letting them anywhere near your iPad.

Plenty of parents learned that the hard way after their young ones racked up absurd charges on their credit cards because of in-app purchases in games like Tap Fish. These games, while presumably free, made it exceedingly easy for kids to spend hundreds of dollars on virtual goods.

The problem was so pervasive that a group of parents sued Apple over it in 2011. Two years later, Apple has reached a settlement, which will give affected parents $5 iTunes credits for their troubles. For claims of amounts over $30, Apple will also offer the option of cash refunds.

The one big drawback? Apple won’t dispense the payments until next year at the earliest, as GigaOM reports, which should temper some of the initial enthusiasm greeting the settlement.

Timeline concerns aside, the big question is how much the settlement is going to cost Apple. Though the final amount will depend on how many people end up filing claims, Apple says it plans to send a notice of the settlement to over 23 million iTunes account holders.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/26/apple-itunes-app-purchases-settlement/feed/0628408Apple will give parents iTunes credits, refunds over in-app purchases lawsuitApple’s Tim Cook to face judge about Apple, Google, Intel anti-poaching pacthttp://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/apples-tim-cook-to-be-questioned-by-judge-about-apple-google-intel-anti-poaching-practices/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/apples-tim-cook-to-be-questioned-by-judge-about-apple-google-intel-anti-poaching-practices/#respondFri, 18 Jan 2013 15:40:06 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=606826Apple is one of a list of companies accused of agreeing not to recruit each other's employees.
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Apple’s Tim Cook will shortly be hearing a question something like that, as Justice Lucy Koh has ordered him to appear in court to give a deposition regarding alleged antitrust violations. Apple is one of a list of companies, including Intuit, Adobe, Google, and Pixar, that are being accused of agreeing not to recruit each other’s employees.

According to the DOJ, the anti-poaching agreements reached back as far as 2005 for Apple and Adobe, 2006 for Apple and Google, and 2007 for Apple and Pixar. The settlement at the time prohibited the companies from “entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.”

The current lawsuit is a follow-on action brought by employees who claim that the companies’ illegal agreements harmed their employment prospects. And while Cook was not Apple’s CEO at the time, Bloomberg reports that Justice Koh told Apple lawyers that since Steve Jobs was copied on emails about the practice, she found it hard to believe that Cook would not have been consulted as well.

There’s currently no timetable for Cook’s deposition, but Google’s Eric Schmidt will be deposed on February 20, and Intel’s Paul Otellini will be grilled in the next few weeks.

If Apple and the other tech companies lose the lawsuit, which is being brought employees as varied as engineers and chefs, they would be liable for additional salary and compensation for the affected staff.

Justice Koh is the same judge who is presiding over many of the Apple-Samsung legal battles. You’d think she’d be getting a little tired of seeing the Cupertino company in her courtroom.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/apples-tim-cook-to-be-questioned-by-judge-about-apple-google-intel-anti-poaching-practices/feed/0606826Apple’s Tim Cook to face judge about Apple, Google, Intel anti-poaching pactCan minors buy Facebook Credits? Parents demand refund in class action suithttp://venturebeat.com/2012/04/20/facebook-credits-minors/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/20/facebook-credits-minors/#respondFri, 20 Apr 2012 17:27:44 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=419485Social media giant Facebook is facing a new class-action lawsuit that involves minors purchasing Facebook credits without parental consent. Facebook Credits are the currency on Facebook’s platform. People can exchange real money for a number of Facebook Credits and use them to buy virtual goods within games hosted on Facebook. For example, you can purchase […]
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Social media giant Facebook is facing a new class-action lawsuit that involves minors purchasing Facebook credits without parental consent.

Facebook Credits are the currency on Facebook’s platform. People can exchange real money for a number of Facebook Credits and use them to buy virtual goods within games hosted on Facebook. For example, you can purchase chips to use in a poker game, or a virtual tractor for Zynga’s Farmville. Facebook then takes a 30 percent cut of all transactions.

The class-action suit was filed by Arizona-resident Glynnis Bohannon, who is seeking a refund after her young son purchased Facebook Credits. The suit is questioning Facebook’s terms of service requirement that its users not provide any false personal information. If some, or all, of a person’s information is false, the court could rule that the Facebook Credit transactions are void, and are likely subject to a full refund.

The suit also questions the vagueness behind Facebook’s terms for minors who use Facebook Credits. Currently those terms state: “If you are under the age of 18, you may make payments only with the involvement of a parent or guardian. You should review these Payments Terms with a parent or guardian to make sure that you both understand them.”

With this kind of stipulation, it could be very easy to convince a judge that Facebook isn’t doing enough to verify a user’s personal account information and to provide a system of checks and balances to ensure that children under the age of 18 have parental consent. And as PaidContent points out, U.S. law allows minors to back out of financial agreements in some cases.

Facebook has requested to move the class-action lawsuit to a federal court (PDF). We’re reaching out to the company for a statement and will update the post with any new info.

Soble’s lawyers assert that Google knowingly violated federal wiretapping laws by placing these cookies in the browser of Safari users who believed that their setting blocked this kind of advertising technology.

“The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information,” Rachel Whetstone, a senior vice president of communications and public policy at Google, told VentureBeat by email. “Unlike other major browsers, Apple’s Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default. However, Safari enables many web features for its users that rely on third parties and third-party cookies, such as “Like” buttons. Last year, we began using this functionality to enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalized ads and other content–such as the ability to “+1” things that interest them.”

The search giant’s position is that they were simply trying to see if users were already signed in with their Google account so they could use the +1 button without logging in again. But in doing so, the company also placed advertising cookies. “We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It’s important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information,” Whetstone said.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/22/google-sued-privacy-safari-apple-cookies/feed/0393820How the cookie crumbles. Safari user sues Google over privacy violationsLeaked emails call Groupon’s European CEO a “slavedriver”, echoing complaints in U.S.http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/17/leaked-emails-call-groupons-european-ceo-a-slavedriver-echoing-complaints-in-u-s/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/17/leaked-emails-call-groupons-european-ceo-a-slavedriver-echoing-complaints-in-u-s/#respondFri, 17 Feb 2012 19:03:25 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=392293Groupon employees have alleged abusive working conditions, breach of contract, and a boss (Groupon’s Eastern European CEO Daniel Glasner) whom they described as a “slavedriver”. Before we dive into the specifics, it should be noted that these emails were excerpted, not printed in full, and translated from German on the Berlin-based tech blog Village Ventures. […]
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Above: Galley slave from Wikicommmons

Groupon employees have alleged abusive working conditions, breach of contract, and a boss (Groupon’s Eastern European CEO Daniel Glasner) whom they described as a “slavedriver”.

Before we dive into the specifics, it should be noted that these emails were excerpted, not printed in full, and translated from German on the Berlin-based tech blog Village Ventures.

The first email reads:

I must remain anonymous, otherwise I will face serious issues. Here I send you something that has bothered us for days, weeks, months, on a regular daily basis at Groupon. Strong pressure, breaches of contractually agreed bonuses with subsequent penalties. Now our titles are supposed to be changed — we will be degraded — if we do not acquire our Dreamlist partners.

“Dreamlist partners” refers to high-end restaurants and spas that Groupon is hoping to provide deals for. CEO Daniel Glaser responded with a statement denying the accusation.

We don’t have any insight or connections in Berlin, so let’s leave the he said she said alone for now and examine the historical context.

Leading up to that lawsuit, a series of increasingly negative testimonials appeared on the website Glass Door, where employees can post anonymously about their bosses and company.

• Immense pressure to hit unrealistic sales goals.
• Management out of touch with what’s going on during phone calls (it’s getting harder and harder to close deals as more and more people don’t want to work with Groupon)
• Used to be a fun culture. Now it’s all about the bottom line and feels like your typical call center
• Sales staff are worked to the bone
• Everyone is miserable and they treat the customers ( merchants) as well as employees with little respect. All they care about is how much money groupon makes. They also created a “boiler” room environment and micromange to the 100th degree. They suffocate you and you can barely breath or go to the bathroom with out feeling guilty.
• They make you feel guilty to take a Saturday off to go to a wedding.
• Sales staff cries all the time.

The issues of unrealistic sales goals, demanding hours, and brutal managment mirrors the complaints coming out of Berlin.

Groupon has been called the fastest growing company in history. It achieved an IPO that valued it in the billions of dollars. A brutal sales culture may be the obvious byproduct of that aggressive expansion.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/17/leaked-emails-call-groupons-european-ceo-a-slavedriver-echoing-complaints-in-u-s/feed/0392293Leaked emails call Groupon’s European CEO a “slavedriver”, echoing complaints in U.S.Disgruntled Netflix investors file class-action lawsuithttp://venturebeat.com/2012/01/17/netflix-class-action-lawsuit/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/17/netflix-class-action-lawsuit/#respondTue, 17 Jan 2012 15:36:54 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=377839A group of disgruntled Netflix investors has filed a class action lawsuit against the movie rental company for allegedly withholding information. Netflix’s stock price suffered from two very large decreases in the summer and fall of 2011, in part due to massive price increases to subscription plans and a failed attempt to spinoff Netflix’s DVD-by-mail […]
]]>A group of disgruntled Netflix investors has filed a class action lawsuit against the movie rental company for allegedly withholding information.

Netflix’s stock price suffered from two very large decreases in the summer and fall of 2011, in part due to massive price increases to subscription plans and a failed attempt to spinoff Netflix’s DVD-by-mail rental business into a separate company. And while the company was clear on those plans, it wasn’t entirely clear on some of the content deal renewals necessary to keep Netflix’s streaming library up to par with competitors.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Northern California by the City of Royal Oak Retirement System (PDF), claims that senior management didn’t reveal to investors that many of its streaming content contracts would soon need to be renegotiated at a much higher cost.

The suit also claims that members of Netflix senior management sold their stock when it was artificially high during the summer — prior to letting investors know the company’s true costs associated with renewing contracts. The official statement from Robbins, Geller, Rudman & Dowd LLP (the firm hired for the class action suit), reads:

“The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, defendants issued materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s business practices and its contracts with content providers. As a result of defendants’ false statements, Netflix’s stock traded at artificially inflated prices during the Class Period, reaching a high of almost $300 per share on July 13, 2011. While Netflix stock was inflated (partially by Netflix buying back its own stock), Company insiders were selling 388,661 shares of their own Netflix stock for proceeds of $90.2 million.

Although the suit was filed by the City of Royal Oak Retirement System as well as “all plaintiffs similarly situated”, it’s possible not all investors will participate.

We’ve reached out to Netflix for further comment and will update this story with any new information.